The short filler tale, Sword of Truth, has ended after two weeks of daily updates. I hope you enjoyed it, giving an insight into the career beginnings of Lily Lawrence. It will remain as part of the main strip for a few more days before becoming part of the members-only section (register here), and then the main storyline of Rainbow Orchid will continue.

The Bronte Museum was wonderful. Haworth is a very picturesque village atop a brick-paved hill which has changed very little in 180 years (with the exception of the tourist shops). The museum is run by the Bronte Society and exists in the Bronte's actual home, the parsonage. One of the main reasons it succeeds, I feel, is that it has not relied on interactive displays, animatronic or posed models of its past inhabitants, or loud recordings and 'fun' activities. Walking through the house is like travelling back in time. There's the desk that Mr Bronte read his bible at every night. There's the couch that Emily Bronte died on. These are the floorboards that creaked as the sisters walked on them and discussed their stories. Each room had some text to accompany it, and your imagination did the rest.

What I also found amazing was that it's almost 150 years since the Bronte's lived there and their goods were dispersed, thrown away, or lost, yet the Society has managed to collect back so many of these items, some of them very fragile, yet surviving time. Whether you know any of the Bronte books or not, I highly recommend a visit to this wonderful place.

The National Film & Television Museum at the BBC's headquarters in Bradford was not as nice an experience. It seemed to use every trick in the book a modern museum would strive for (that's after we discovered where to actually go to see the museum part of the building) - buttons to press, levers to pull, voice recordings, mannequins (save us from museum mannequins!). It was just dull. The most interesting part, for me, was the animation floor, which had actual film cels on display. The trouble is, most of these had no context, so they were just pictures in isolation. Seeing the scene pictured on a screen would have given meaning to these displays, or at least a reproduction of further cels from the same scene to give some juxtaposition. The animation floor did have some good stuff too and was interesting to look around. One section for kids left me completely baffled - mirrors, levers and lights, most of whose purpose I could not understand. In all the museum wasn't awful, it was educational, but disappointing overall, and not a patch on the Museum of the Moving Image that used to be on the South Bank, which I've visited a number of times and couldn't help but compare it with.

In the evening Ellie and I did go to the Imax cinema - with about 4 other people in the audience - and saw a very good 3D film called Aliens of the Deep, even if it was a bit too Disneyfied for my liking - but still a marvellous experience.

Actually, we did have one more museum experience which was worse than Bradford - the Jorvik Viking Centre in York. This started as an archaeological dig in the late 1970s and has become an animatronic hell. After a laughably bad 'time-ride' (compare with Disneyland's infinitely better Star Tours), you get into a pod that takes you through the ancient city of York (c. 975 AD) and then get off at the end to see a few of the finds, once you get past the bored looking actors playing 'actual vikings' (one of which will stamp a coin for you if you give him an extra £1 on top of the already over-priced ticket you've just bought). Maybe it's aimed at kids, but even as a kid I think I'd have been numbed by most of it. The best section was at the end (and it's not a big place, even including the obligatory shop) where a full skeleton was on display, pointing out the poor chap's various wounds and traumas as seen through the chips and grooves left in his bones.

I'll end with the last fabulous day - Fountain's Abbey - a beautiful place and an enormous ruin to explore. The weather helped, but again your imagination did the work, prompted by the information on a leaflet or a guided walk.

Edit: Best line from the holiday: Ellie noticing a crowd of old ladies outside the famous Betty's tea room in Harrogate - "they're swarming round it like flies!"

Last night Ellie and I watched Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events. It was like watching a bad play. Every time Jim Carrey appeared I yawned and wanted the film to end (I have nothing against Carrey as an actor, just this film). The baby's utterances would have been funnier without the subtitles. It had no atmosphere, mystery or excitement. Some of the designs were nice. Very disappointed.

On holiday, at the Picture House in York, we saw Crash. This was one of those ensemble films where a series of characters and scenes all intertwine, something like Magnolia. It was very good, with excellent acting and great characterisation. Some of the characters were likeable (the lock-repair chap) and some weren't (the Iranian shop keeper). Others had more shades of grey (the two policemen, the criminals and the TV director). It's a film about race and how complicated prejudice is. My favourite scene, and a turning point in the story, was where Matt Dillon rescues the lady he practically assaulted earlier in the film from a car wreck. Near the end of the film, the younger policeman makes an assumption and discovers he's not as pure as he imagines, echoing the advice Matt Dillon gives him earler, "don't think you know yourself just yet" (paraphrase).

I've had a pretty busy year so far, work-wise, which is great, but one thing I have missed having the time to devote to is my comic strip, The Rainbow Orchid. For that reason, a few months ago I decided to adapt the strip into a webcomic format, with the main intention of giving me a weekly schedule to work to, even if it's just to advance the strip forward only a little. The webcomic is not intended to replace the book, as a printed collection is still my ultimate ambition for the story.

Recently the webcomic version passed 50,000 hits (actually 54,000 at the time of writing), with about 40,000 in July, and 10,000 so far this month. Converting that into unique visitors that's about 12,000 in July, which is very pleasing, especially seeing as I haven't really promoted it much, just dropping a well-placed mention here and there. I know that falls far short of many webcomics, but I also know they're numbers to be fairly happy about.

I don't usually do public forum angst, but I have not been feeling good about my own drawing recently, and I have lost quite a bit of confidence in my own ability. This is nothing unusual, and the good side of it is that it does make me want to try and improve my work and redouble my efforts. I do feel enormously grateful that even one person enjoys my writing and drawing, and the response I've been getting to Rainbow Orchid is wonderful - so, thank you!

I'll end this with a very early picture of my main character, Julius Chancer - I don't think I've ever shown this before, from my sketchbook while developing various characters (1997). Check out his enormous feet!

You might have noticed, if your mouse has lead you into the further reaches of this website, that the readers' corner has an artwork section. This is a call for contributions! If you can scratch out anything with a pen or pencil, and fancy doing some Rainbow Orchid inspired artwork, then send it to me for inclusion in the gallery - it would be great to see some new work added.

In other news: the particularly eagle-eyed among you may have seen that the Pencil Monkey forum was down. A new forum has just been created to replace the old one, and can be found here.

Also, if you haven't yet signed up as a registered reader, do think about it as there will be some great new stuff for members coming up in the next few weeks, not to mention the opportunity to win some original art. You can register here.

It's all very nice getting the ocassional DVD (latest: Jefferson Airplane) or package from ebay in the post, but the most exciting thing to receive is art stuff! This morning I received some fresh Bristol Board pads (A3 and A4) and a couple of replacement nibs for my Rapidograph pens (which probably needed replacing about a year ago actually). The goods arrived so quickly and were so well packed, I'll give a little plug to the company, which is ArtThings (also known as Churchill's Art & Stationary in Glamorgan). The other online art shop I use is Graphics Direct, where I recently bought refill ink from, but they don't sell the Bristol Board pads I like - but no complaints against their service, and I recommend them too.

Went to see this tonight with Elyssa... very enjoyable, if far more weird than I expected. It was sort of Wizard of Oz meets the Rocky Horror Picture Show meets Billy Elliott. It had an 'English' setting as well. Depp was very good, as usual, and the squirrels were excellent... they must have been CG, but you couldn't see the join*. Not much to say about it, but good.

As an aside, I've never read the original book, but once, for my mum's birthday when she was ill in bed, I performed the play version (from a book) with me playing all the parts. I can only remember one prop which was a brown paper bag, but there must have been more to it than that. I suppose I was about ten or twelve years old.

* Edit 10.08.05: According to the Funday Times, Aug 7: "Four animal trainers worked with 40 squirrels for the nut room scene. The real rodents were supplemented by a troop of lifelike animatronic squirrels, made with real squirrel fur."